Power Line Carrier Techniques Applied to Spacecraft Data Handling

Power Line Carrier (PLC) data transmission coupled with spread spectrum technique is evaluated for onboard satellite purpose. Power Line Carrier present a great advantage in terms of mass saving and integration cost by suppressing the data bus harness. Spread Spectrum techniques allows data transmission inside the power supply noise. This paper will address the major functionality keys of this transmission method and will define the main trades off to conduct. INTRODUCTION A major trend for the next satellite generation stands in the increase of the equipment unit's quantity, of their complexity and of their communication needs. A first approach to reduce the number of links and also the overall mass stands in multiplexing Acq/Ctr on data bus. ALCATEL SPACE with its so-called new avionics 4000 has made a significant step with an intensive use of the data bus : round 140 units on its proprietary OBDH-485 bus and round 10 units on the MIL-STD-1553 data bus for Telecom Geostationnary satellite class. According to this state of the art, the following step is the suppression of the data bus harness by means of Wireless or Power Line Carrier (PLC) techniques that has been identified as a development axis. Many PLC components are available for domestic/industry applications. Nevertheless, transmission levels, operating frequencies, radiation hardening performances of these parts are usually not compatible with space environment constraints. 2/12